The Fantasy Football Scout World Cup of FPL knockout stages continue this week with two more second-round matches.
After the group stages concluded last week, we saw Frank Lampard take on Gareth Bale and Harry Kane face off against Trent Alexander-Arnold in the opening clashes of the last-sixteen.
Before we jump into the next phase of matches, let’s take a look at the results so far.
Last Sixteen – Match 1
- Frank Lampard – 75.8%
- Gareth Bale – 24.2%
Such is the weight behind pre-tournament favourite Frank Lampard, he was able to completely crush Gareth Bale in their last sixteen tie.
That’s despite the former Spurs man offering plenty of joy with his mega hauls in the years leading up to his joining Real Madrid in 2013.
In the end, Lampard’s longevity proved to be the deciding factor, as no Fantasy asset has as many Dream Team appearances as him (seven).
Last Sixteen – Match 2
Harry Kane – 55.1%
Trent Alexander-Arnold – 44.9%
This tie pitted two current FPL players against each other but with out completely backgrounds.
In the end, Kane’s longer presence on the Fantasy scene has won him this tie. Emerging as an incredible £5.0m option in 2014/15 he has been an established part of the premium forward scene for several years, when fit.
Trent Alexander-Arnold ran him relatively close though, even if he is a relative upstart compared to the Spurs man. It’s been an incredible rise for Liverpool’s right-back but perhaps too recent for him to dislodge Kane.
Maybe this tie might go a different way in two or three years…
Current standings
Rooney vs Terry
The third knockout match throws us back several years as Wayne Rooney and John Terry go head-to-head.
This is sure to be a hard-to-call tie with each player offering something very different in their heydays.
Since records began in 2006/07, nobody has scored more FPL points than Rooney (1,835) who has two 200+ seasons and made the Dream Team four times.
He also holds the record for the highest-ever Double Gameweek score, registering 32 points in January 2010.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that Rooney emerged as the winner of Group E securing 40.2% of the vote ahead of Marcos Alonso, Raheem Sterling and Nemanja Vidic.
Meanwhile, John Terry has been in an end-of-season Dream Team on six different occasions, more than any other defender while Lampard is the only player in FPL history to have achieved that feat more times.
It was clean sheets rather than goals that propped up Terry’s appeal, as he kept 25 en route to Chelsea’s first title in 50 years back in 2004/05.
But the centre-back also had an eye for goal, scoring in every Premier League season from 2000/01 to 2016/17.
All of that was why he progressed from Group F with 26% of the vote, behind Luis Suarez and ahead of Clint Dempsey and Gareth McAuley.
De Bruyne vs Salah
Another present-day clash pits Kevin De Bruyne against Mohamed Salah in another hard-to-call tie.
De Bruyne comes into the knockout stages as the winner of Group G, securing 36% of the vote ahead of Leighton Baines, Jamie Vardy and Cesc Fabregas.
The Belgian’s phenomenal assist count, 52 between 2015/16 and 2018/19, means he has two 190+ seasons to his name in the last five years and he could be on course for another one.
Having already equalled his scoring record for a campaign 29 Gameweeks into 2019/20, De Bruyne should break 200 points again, currently standing at 178.
The only man ahead of him in the 2019/20 standings thus far is his second-round opponent Salah.
The Egyptian leads the scores at this suspended stage with a total of 186 and will surely be eyeing up the accolade of top-scorer once again.
Even though Salah has been on the Fantasy radar for a shorter time than De Bruyne, the Liverpool man has top-scored in FPL every year since arriving at Anfield.
In 2017/18 he broke the all-time record with 303, following it up with 259 in 2018/19.
Despite those achievements, he had to bow the knee to Sergio Aguero in Group H, coming through as the runner-up on 41.3% of the vote.
So it will be interesting to see if Salah can get the better of the Argentinian’s team-mate in the knockout rounds…
